Charter Damn Her if She'd Feel That Again
by suspiciousteapot
Summary: Moments from Sabriel's childhood with Ellimere and her relationship with Lirael. Warning: Major character death (somewhat explicit)


Sabriel refused to go through the gates.

"I wanna stay with you," she sobbed, grabbing onto her father's leg. "And I wanna go home."

He gently pulled her away and bent to one knee, eyes level with Sabriel's.

"This will be your home. And these girls will be a family to you. A family you could not have in the Old Kingdom."

"I have you and Sret and Lom and Jenna- " she said tearfully.

Her father sighed, cutting her off. He cupped her face.

"I have told you before, it is too dangerous. Here, you can grow up safely. Now they are strangers, but it will not always be that way. Before you know it, you will love them as sisters."

Sabriel pouted. "I don't want sisters, and I don't love them. I don't even care about them."

Abhorsen smiled sadly. "You will, with time."

–

"We will begin by introducing ourselves. Please say your name and where you're from. You start, dear," said the headmistress, looking at Sabriel.

"I'm Sabriel -" she began.

"You speak funny," interrupted a girl with enormous, curly hair.

Sabriel ignored her. "- and I'm from the Old Kingdom."

The girl with the crazy hair – Ellimere Nissen - caught up with her outside the classroom. "Are you really from across the Wall? My big brother says everyone from over there is a barbarian and they're all very superstitious and carve things into their foreheads to protect against demons and he would know because he's an officer in the army." Ellimere said proudly. "Look you even have one of their forehead scars!" she exclaimed, pushing up Sabriel's fringe.

"We're not barbarians!" Sabriel said angrily, slapping away the annoying girl's hand.

Her father was wrong; she hated these stupid, mean girls.

–

"Hey! Barbarian girl!" It was that obnoxious, big-mouthed bully. Sabriel had been avoiding her for a whole month, but Ellimere wouldn't leave her alone. The small, quiet girl – Sulyn, she remembered – was with her. She was always with her, though Sabriel didn't understand why; Sulyn seemed so nice.

"Is there a tunnel that goes under the Wall?" Ellimere asked. Sabriel was taken aback. She thought Ellimere hated the Old Kingdom, so why was she looking for a tunnel into it?

She shook her head. "No, that's silly. Then people wouldn't have to go through the Wall, and why would we have it in the first place?"

"There must be some easy way to get across!" insisted Ellimere. "We're so close to the border half the time I swear I knock my field hockey balls over the Wall. Someone _has_ to have made one at _some_ point. I wanna see what it's like over there."

"Even if we don't find one, it would be fun to explore the school. It's hundreds of years old, so it's got to have tons of secret passages," said Sulyn.

They had a point. The idea of a secret tunnel was exciting. And if they found a tunnel, she could show them the Old Kingdom wasn't full of barbarians.

"Fine. I'll come with you. But you have to call me Sabriel."

Ellimere considered this, and then nodded decisively.

"Alright, I'll call you Sabriel." Then she grabbed Sabriel and Sulyn's hands, and took off towards the school building. "Now let's go explore!"

–

"We start with swords in Fighting Arts tomorrow!" Ellimere exclaimed, practically bouncing down the hall as she, Sabriel and Sulyn walked out of Etiquette.

Sulyn groaned. "I'll be black and blue by the end of the day."

"I think we'll do alright," said Sabriel "After all, we've read all the chapters in our textbook. As long as we follow those - "

"Oh psht!" Ellimere cut her off. "Books won't help with this. The only way to really learn is to get your hands dirty. You just have to figure it out as you go and practice until your arms fall off. Just like field hockey"

"Well you would know," teased Sabriel. "You practically wield your hockey stick as a sword."

"Not true!" Ellimere protested. "You know I meant that they're alike in that you can't learn them from a book. Field hockey is a very polite game. "

"Yes, do excuse me, I must now break your ankle." Sabriel said, mimicking Ellimere and pretending to swing a hockey stick at Sulyn's shin.

Ellimere began to protest, but it was drowned out by Sabriel and Sulyn's laughter. Eventually she gave up and joined them, her laughter ringing off the dormitory's stone walls.

–

"What did your parents say?" Sulyn asked as Ellimere stormed into the dormitory. She and Sabriel were sitting on Sabriel's bed, reading.

"What do you think they said?" Ellimere snorted. "They said they did not send me to one of the best schools in the country so I could end up a mechanic. I'm to go to university."

Though she didn't say it, Sabriel was relieved. She was sorry her friend couldn't pursue the vocation she wanted, but if she did, they wouldn't all be able to go to school together. The idea of parting from the only family she'd ever known was distressing; she tried to avoid contemplating it.

"It can't be that bad." Sulyn protested. Sulyn had fallen in love with politics and was counting down the days until she could go to university and study it full time.

"And perhaps we can find some mechanics classes," Sabriel agreed.

Ellimere shot her a skeptical look, and then flopped down on the bed.

"Bugger university," she said, "let's all just ride off to Sabriel's mysterious country, marry princes and live happily ever after in some great castle."

"You would be bored out of your mind married to some prince," Sabriel reminded her. "And there's no royal family, so we don't actually have any princes to marry. "

"Besides," said Sulyn, "the Old Kingdom is not an idyllic storybook country, is it Sabriel?"

"That's the reason I'm here." Sabriel agreed.

"Oh you two are such downers. And it won't be dangerous. Remember the shadow beast? Sabriel did away with it as easily as if it was a bothersome mosquito." She batted her eyelashes at Sabriel. "You'll protect us from any nasty Old Kingdom creatures, won't you?"

Sabriel laughed. "So while you two live happily with your princes, I have to spend my life guarding you from dead things? Of course. That sounds wonderful. Thanks Ellie."

"I knew you'd like the idea," Ellimere teased back.

–

The room was far too quiet. All around her were the girls and teachers she'd grown up with. The girls and teachers she would probably never see again. Their heads bowed by sorrow; none looked up as Sulyn helped Sabriel walk to the front of the room. She could see the rows of bodies clearly; soldiers, schoolmistresses and schoolgirls all lined up like the bells across her chest. Sabriel's eyes were dry as she looked at the faces of those who had lost their lives fighting the threat she'd brought them. Though she had felt them all die - each one a cold punch in the stomach - she still could not comprehend, could not accept how this school, this home, this place her father had sent her to keep her safe, had become a graveyard.

They stopped at the first body on the left. As she saw Ellimere's face, solemn and somber now as it had never been in life, something broke within her. In the space of a few weeks, she had lost her father, lost her sister, lost everything she knew.

Her cry pierced the silence. Loud sobs wracked her body, and Sulyn held her as she shook.

No matter what Touchstone said, she had caused this. It was true that had she not brought Kerrigor here, he would likely have defeated them and killed a great many people. But perhaps not these people. The people she loved might have survived. The knowledge she had done the right thing could do nothing to dull that pain.

* * *

The room was far too loud. The Perimeter Guard barracks bustled with activity; General Greene shouted commands over the clamour of soldiers setting up beds and medical equipment, many voices cast spells of healing, and Touchstone tried to answer the many confused cries of the Southerlings. In the midst of it all, Sabriel sat beside Lirael's bed. Her sister's bed. She felt detached from the word, as though she were applying it to the wrong person, though looking at Lirael was almost like looking at a picture of her younger self. Despite the noise, Lirael did not wake. She had not even seemed awake when Sabriel and Sam had helped her away from Orannis. She had barely even seemed alive.

Yet sleep did not bring her peace. How could it, after that? Often, she screamed in her sleep, fighting with her covers, and then curled into a tight ball, crying into her pillow and hugging close the small statue that never left her hand - the small soapstone dog Sabriel didn't remember being present until after Orannis had been rebound.

She felt the urge to take Lirael in her arms, to protect her from the sorrow she had already known too much of. Yet she knew she could not shield her from the pain she had suffered, nor even from the pain she would suffer in the future, for an Abhorsen's path was never free of suffering.

She cast healing spells over Lirael's wrist, trying to alleviate any pain she could, even if it was only physical. Sabriel did not leave her side for many hours, stroking her forehead until the tossing and the tears stopped. Lirael was still a stranger to her, and she did not love her as she loved Sam and Ellie, but love would come with time. Lirael was her little sister, and Sabriel would not leave her to suffer alone.

–

Lirael woke early the next morning. She seemed confused by the hand on her brow and the person it belonged to. For a moment she did not appear to recognize Sabriel, her eyes staring through her, perhaps to look on someone who had once occupied her place. She looked so hopeful, like a child. Then her eyes cleared and her face fell. Sabriel wondered who she had been mistaken for.

"Abhorsen?"

"Please," Sabriel said gently, "call me Sabriel. We are sisters, after all."

"Sabriel." Lirael agreed. "Is everyone - " she broke off, unable to finish her question. She looked away, letting her hair fall over her face in an attempt to hide her tears.

"Everyone is physically healed or healing." Sabriel answered. "They will recover."

Lirael nodded, but did not reply or look back up at her, once again curling back in on herself. Sabriel made no further attempt at conversation, but she did not leave. Being left alone with a fresh sorrow only sharpened its pain, in her experience. Neither did she try to tell her she would heal too. It was not something she needed to hear at the moment, and likely not something she would be able to accept for some time. Sabriel simply sat with Lirael, resting a hand of her arm as she silently wept for the friend she had lost.

When her tears had run dry, Lirael said, "I suppose there is still much to do, and if everyone is healed, you are all likely wanting to return…home."

"Not quite yet, though I do have something to ask of you on that subject," said Sabriel. "I understand if you want to return to the Glacier, but you are family, and we'd love for you to come live with us in Belisaere."

"No," said Lirael quietly but decisively. "I don't think I can go back to the Glacier."

Sabriel nodded. She knew well the feeling that the home you had grown up in was no longer a place you could return to. "That's settled then."

–

Lirael sat by a window in the library. She wrote in the large, leather-bound volume Sabriel had given her for her birthday after Lirael had told her she liked to record what had happened on their trips.

Though she spent a good deal of time with Sam, Ellimere, Touchstone and herself, Sabriel knew that Lirael usually came here at the end of the day or after one of their trips - whenever she wanted to be alone. At these times, the little statue of the Dog was always beside her.

But of course, she also came to read. _The Book of the Dead_ , books of sword fighting, books of history, books of Charter and Free Magic, bestiaries, Lirael read everything the library had to offer. Each day Lirael would look up what Sabriel suggested they work on the next day, or review something she was having trouble with.

"I understand better if I've read it first," Lirael explained once when Sabriel found her reading up on a sword fighting drill they she was going to show her following day. And indeed, she improved rapidly.

–

"We've got two calls for help today," said Sabriel as she entered her study. She and Lirael met there every morning after breakfast to begin the day's training.

"The first comes from the Clayr. They report that one of their patrols has seen a mordicant heading to Navis and are pursuing it. The second asks for help with something in Ancelstierre. They seem unsure of what exactly it is."

"I could go to Ancelstierre. Whatever troubles them, I've likely read about it." Lirael offered quickly. It was true that Lirael's encyclopedic knowledge of creatures would likely be quite useful in this situation, but Sabriel thought a more likely explanation for her choice was that she was reluctant to confer with the Clayr. Lirael would have to make peace with her past at some point, but it was up to her to decide when she was ready to do so.

Besides, going to Ancelstierre would likely be safer for Lirael than for Sabriel. Corolini had been overthrown, but many there knew her face, and she doubted his supporters had been completely dispersed. Lirael would be in no danger on that front. Even if Nicholas had mentioned Lirael and her relation to Sabriel to his uncle, nobody but the guards had ever seen her, so she doubted they would care. And whatever was in Ancelstierre, it likely was not as dangerous as a mordicant at its full strength.

"I'm sure you have." Sabriel agreed. "I'll go to Navis then, but please be careful in Ancelstierre. We don't know exactly what we're dealing with." She hated the thought of sending her little sister into danger just as much as she'd hated the thought of sending her son, but it had to be done. Lirael was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and her feet had been set on a dangerous path before she'd known how to walk. Shielding her from it now would only serve to put her in more danger in the future, when she became the Abhorsen in her own right.

Yet Sabriel still felt fear gnaw at her as she flew to the Glacier. Lirael was a strong, competent Abhorsen, but being strong did not make you immortal.

–

Their blades locked once more. If she could only force Chlorr to hesitate for a second, she could bind her, but Sabriel felt herself tiring.

She heard Lirael scream, and out of the corner of her eye she saw her sister fall, one hand over her side – blood gushing out between her fingers. Chlorr's servant loomed over her, it's blade-like arms poised to strike.

Sabriel had felt one sister die, and Charter damn her if she'd let that happen again.

With a surge of strength she pushed Chlorr back, blade slicing through the shadowy capes that cloaked her distorted body. She shot a binding spell at Chlorr, seeking to buy herself as much time as possible, and turned to the Free Magic being that threatened her little sister.

Its arm flashed downwards, but Sabriel blocked it before it could strike true. She forced it away from Lirael. Between parries she drew and rang Dyrim, forcing the creature to reveal its name. Then she replaced Dyrim with Saraneth, the bell's deep toll joining with her will to shackle the creature before her. As she did, she felt the bond on Chlorr breaking. Quickly Sabriel pulled a crystal bottle out of her breeches, unstoppered it, and placed it on the ground. She withdrew Kibeth.

"Azir! Walk!" She commanded. The creature fought her binding, and almost broke it, but Sabriel had the strength that comes of fear, and she forced the creature into the bottle, speaking a strong spell of binding to hold the stopper in place. She swiftly crossed the border to Death and threw the bottle into the River. It would travel rapidly beyond the Ninth in that form. She stepped back into Life just as Chlorr reached her.

Chlorr shrieked in anger and slashed at Sabriel, but Sabriel sidestepped her and rang Saraneth once more. _Submit, damn you!_ Another bell joined her. _Lirael._ She felt Chlorr's will fracture, and once again Sabriel called out the spell of binding. _Just a few more minutes._

She turned and ran to her sister, still holding Saraneth by the clapper. Lirael sank to one knee, the force required for wielding Saraneth having sapped her energy.

As Sabriel ran she plunged into the vast depth of the Charter, pulling out and stringing together the strongest healing marks she could control. She reached Lirael and released the spells. The world was reduced to the pounding of her heart in her ears and the glow of the marks she channeled into Lirael's body. She felt detached from the world, lost in the golden spiral of the Charter.

She was jolted back to herself by a pain that ripped through her abdomen, reopening the old scar.

The spell broke. But it had been enough.

Sabriel fell to her knees as Lirael rose.

Sabriel rang the Binder, but her strength was gone. Saraneth's toll was soft and weak. Lirael's bell joined hers for a moment, loud and clear. But then she spoke the same binding spell Sabriel had used, and dropped down beside her, preparing a healing spell.

 _No! Now is your chance! Bind Chlorr! Send her past the Ninth!_

She could not hear her own voice, and for a moment she feared she had not managed to say the words.

 _We will both die if you don't bind her now!_

Lirael's face was anguished, and she look like she might protest, but she recognized the truth of Sabriel's words. She rose and brandished Kibeth and Saraneth. The furious dance of the Walker joined with the commanding toll of the Binder to force Chlorr to cease her fight.

Sabriel felt Lirael force Chlorr into Death, and for a moment, her triumph overpowered her pain. Lirael would succeed. She was strong, stronger than Sabriel had been. _It's finally over. We've won._

Her vision narrowed.

The pain was gone. It was raining. She hadn't noticed that before. The warm drops fell on her wound like a kiss. _His lips left hers, traveling down to caress her neck, her collarbone, her breasts, and finally to linger on the angry red line that marred her abdomen._ She closed her eyes. _I'm so sorry, my love_.

She thought of Sam and Ellie, whose lives she had missed so much of, fighting as she was now. She forced her eyes back open. She owed it to them not to give up now, to fight her way back to them. But she could feel herself getting colder. _I never wanted to leave you, my loves. I'm sorry._

She saw a dark figure moving towards her. _Lirael._ She heard Lirael call her name, could hear her calling her to stay. But she knew she would not be able to hold on until Lirael reached her. Already, she felt the River's pull. Sabriel knew the guilt and grief that came from outliving a sister. From not being able to save a sister. _I'm sorry you must know that too. But it was not your time. You had to live. You have to live._

–

As Lirael stepped back into Life and began to run to Sabriel, she felt the cold wave of her sister's death slam into her, dropping her to her knees and leaving her one last thing to remember her sister by.

 _Let this be my last lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die._


End file.
